Mad Max: George Miller Wrote Furiosa Prequel Before Shooting Fury Road

08/31/2022 06:29 pm EDT

After years away from the dystopic franchise, George Miller delivered audiences a massive hit with Mad Max: Fury Road, with the prequel Mad Max: Furiosa currently in production to further explore the Imperator Furiosa character. Miller recently pointed out that, rather than realizing the storytelling potential of the character after shooting Fury Road, he actually had done a significant amount of writing about the character to help motivate the events of Fury Road, only then relying on the prequel story he had written to help inform the decisions of Fury Road. Mad Max: Furiosa lands in theaters on May 24, 2024.

"When we wrote Mad Max, the task was to tell a story that was always on the run and to see how much the audience could pick up in passing. That was one of the tricks of Mad Max: Fury Road, that there would be references to things of where she's from, why they're doing things, but it was always on the run," Miller recalled to The AV Club. "There were very few moments of quiet. We never explained how she lost her arm. We never explain what the actual Green Place Of Many Mothers was. We never explained the workings of the Citadel. So we had the screenplay virtually complete before we shot Fury Road, and we did it because it arose out of wanting to explain to everybody who Furiosa was -- to Charlize when she took on the role, and to all the actors and the designers and everybody else working on the Citadel and so on. The feeling was, gee, this is a pretty good screenplay, and then I kept saying to myself, 'If Fury Road works, I'd really like to tell this story.'"

He continued, "So it came about, I'm not going to say accidentally, but it came out of a need to explain [Fury Road's] world which, as I said, essentially happened over three days and two nights. It's really trying to explain how that world came to be."

As if the new film being in production isn't exciting enough for audiences, these details about how far back the history goes on this story will surely have fans looking forward to the prequel even more. Rather than attempting to recapture the magic that made Fury Road possible, it sounds as though that DNA is baked into Furiosa.

The new film is described,  "As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home."

Mad Max: Furiosa lands in theaters on May 24, 2024.

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